Black holes are massive beasts that annihilate anything that dares to cross them. We don’t know a whole lot about these invisible, terrifying bodies, but astronomers have found a new way to study their mysterious behavior.
By observing the X-rays blasting from a star torn apart by a black hole, a team of researchers were able to calculate how fast the black hole spins — clocking it at nearly 50 percent the speed of light. This marks the first time that astronomers used X-rays, which orbit the black hole every 131 seconds, to calculate its incredible speed. The research, which could help correlate a black hole’s age with its speed, was published today in the journal Science.
Stellar Shredding
The discovery dates back to November 2014, when astronomers were observing a galaxy 300 million light years from Earth. They saw the galaxy’s central, supermassive black hole lure in and rip ...
